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OBS + BlackMagic ATEM Mini

PostPosted: Mon Jul 27, 2020 11:19 pm
by Rod Duarte
Hello everyone!

I'm starting to plan out an exciting new venture I'll be diving in, with my band.
So a part of it is figuring out what software and hardware I'll need to get, to make it work as intended.
I've been a streamer on Twitch for a few years now, and have used OBS since day one, so naturally, I'd like to keep using it.

Now, here's the scenario:
It'll be a full band in a room, with multiple cameras. Individual shots AND room shots.
I need a computer in there to run all of it, but to keep it simple and mobile, I'll be getting a laptop.
Now, this means I'll have two options, from what I can think of.
One, I'd get USB capture cards;
Two, I'd get a switcher like the BlackMagic ATEM Mini.

I'm leaning towards the switcher because that makes it HELLA light on the laptop, since it's technically only taking in ONE webcam input, and the switcher itself is doing all the cuts, shot changes etc. It also provides theoretically infinite ways to add more cameras, whereas if I had capture cards, I'd be increasing the load on the laptop with each additional one I added.

Now the caveat with this is...
I really want a feature where the audience can switch camera shots. I'd of course lock this behind being a subscriber or at least having enough chat points to use the commands, etc.
I have already figured out how to do this via a chatbot, but it only works in Windows so the laptop will have to be a Windows machine.

The question for YOU guys, then, is:
Is there a way to get OBS (or something else?) to "talk" to the ATEM Mini, and issue commands to it, to change cameras?
Because the way the bot works, is it will take commands from chat and change OBS scenes/sources.
But, if I'm using the ATEM, then OBS is only seeing ONE source.
Maybe there's a way to get the laptop to see the separate stuff that's going into the ATEM?
The other reason I want to do this, is that I'm going to design my own graphics and animations for transitions, and AFAIK, that'll only work if they're happening inside OBS, unless the ATEM can accept custom made transitions?

Help.

Thanks in advance!

Re: OBS + BlackMagic ATEM Mini

PostPosted: Mon Jul 27, 2020 11:24 pm
by Roman Pytkin Pekarek
Sure .. Atem is controlable with ethernet .. So your bot can connect directly to ATEM and switch cameras .. Or U can use any other macro language .. Like Just Macros .. Or Copmanion ..

Re: OBS + BlackMagic ATEM Mini

PostPosted: Tue Jul 28, 2020 1:54 am
by Rod Duarte
What, really???

Care to elaborate on that?
Dude that'd be GREAT.

Re: OBS + BlackMagic ATEM Mini

PostPosted: Tue Jul 28, 2020 3:41 am
by Rod Duarte
Right, so talking to someone on the Streamlabs Chatbot Discord, they suggested something a lot simpler.

Have the bot trigger keystrokes when the commands are issued, with AutoHotKey.

Now I need to know if the ATEM works with keystrokes, as opposed to clicking the buttons in the application, and I think I'll be all set!

Anyone?

Re: OBS + BlackMagic ATEM Mini

PostPosted: Tue Jul 28, 2020 4:40 am
by Pavel Lavrov
Yes in Atem Control software you can use number (and other) keys to change source etc...


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Re: OBS + BlackMagic ATEM Mini

PostPosted: Tue Jul 28, 2020 4:45 am
by Pavel Lavrov
But a better way to make it all work would probably be to make your ‘bot’ sent commands to “Companion” and setup companion to control OBS and Atem. That way it will be much more flexible and you can setup Macros in Atem and do really advanced automation...

For even more advanced setup JustMacros is something to think about...


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Re: OBS + BlackMagic ATEM Mini

PostPosted: Tue Jul 28, 2020 5:11 am
by Rod Duarte
Alright so what's this "Companion"?

I'm guessing it's an app?
Google search shows too many random things...

Also, for the functionality I'm thinking about, where I have multiple or all the cameras that go into the ATEM, showing at one time, do I need Supersource? As in, can the minis do this?

Re: OBS + BlackMagic ATEM Mini

PostPosted: Tue Jul 28, 2020 5:15 am
by Pavel Lavrov
Bitfocus Companion - open source software that can control many things including Atem.

Don’t think Atem mini has SuperSource...

if you have to see all sources at once you could feed Multiview output. Or better get enough capture cards to take all your sources to OBS and do everything there...


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Re: OBS + BlackMagic ATEM Mini

PostPosted: Tue Jul 28, 2020 5:52 am
by Rod Duarte
So, it's not just that I need to see all inputs.

To better explain this setup:

It's 4 band members.

I will have 6 cameras going. One for each of us and two "full room" cameras.

And then there'll be a multitude of different shots where I will use anywhere between 2 to all 6 cameras in one shot.

All the shots will be pre-set and I won't need to do any of this live, nobody will be moving around since it's a studio setting.
So I need to switch between shots, but with the freedom to compose shots with as many of the cameras at once, as I need.

PCI Capture cards won't work for this, because it'll be a laptop running things. So anything that's not USB is out of the picture, no pun intended.
I guess USB capture cards would be a way, but I also want to avoid having too much cable management, because if I went this route, that'd mean a USB hub and each capture card would go into it, and then to the laptop.
Of course it'd be less messy if it was USB capture cards with more than one input, but that'd go back to making the switching complicated.

With the Mini, I could get 2 of them and that'd cover my 6 cameras and still allow space for adding 2 more.
But, as stated above, I need to be able to display all of those cameras in a single shot.

Re: OBS + BlackMagic ATEM Mini

PostPosted: Tue Jul 28, 2020 6:02 am
by Pavel Lavrov
Looking at the specs of Atem mini, it only has 1 DVE. That would let you do picture in picture effect, but not all inputs...

Going up in the Atem product line, Atem 4 M/E is the one that introduces SuperSource (up to 4 sources at the time) but since you have more M/E you can add other effects...

The other route you have is to go with desktop PC and HDMI capture cards (or SDI) 2x “Decklink Quad HDMI”... mixing in OBS should be possible the way you described...


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Re: OBS + BlackMagic ATEM Mini

PostPosted: Tue Jul 28, 2020 2:05 pm
by David_Anderson
Am I understanding correctly that you want a total of 6 shots and you want to allow remote viewers to control the camera angles? What's going to happen when they don't agree on what angle they want to view?

My apologies if I misunderstood the original post.

Best,

David

Re: OBS + BlackMagic ATEM Mini

PostPosted: Tue Jul 28, 2020 7:51 pm
by Rod Duarte
David_Anderson wrote:Am I understanding correctly that you want a total of 6 shots and you want to allow remote viewers to control the camera angles? What's going to happen when they don't agree on what angle they want to view?

My apologies if I misunderstood the original post.

Best,

David


So the way it works is:

Twitch has a system of chat points.
The more someone types in chat and the longer they watch, the more points they earn.
You can also set something like this up via the bot, which is what I'll have to do.
Then, each time someone uses a shot-changing command, they "pay" chat points.
This makes it so mostly frequent and active people can use them.
And, to prevent a whole mess of changing shots, you can set a cooldown for commands. So first come first serve, and then it'll stay in that shot X number of seconds, before returning to whichever "default" shot I set, and I'll have a global cooldown that's longer than each command's cooldowns, this way it stays X number of seconds on the "default" shot as well.

:-)

Re: OBS + BlackMagic ATEM Mini

PostPosted: Tue Jul 28, 2020 8:03 pm
by Rod Duarte
Ok, so from what I've understood, the minis work for changing cameras, and we've figured out a way to have the chat commands change them via bot. Cool.

But, I can't compose multicam shots on them. So it looks like I'll need to go the capture card route for this, won't I.

Now, I'd like to use BlackMagic stuff because in the future I'll upgrade the cameras to BlackMagic ones.

From what I see here, BM only offers PCI internal cards though.
Namely, the DeckLink Quad HDMI Recorder, right?

But I'm going to be on a laptop...
Maybe I can do this using some sort of external PCI enclosure that connects to the laptop via USB?
Something like this? https://amzn.to/339xnsB

Re: OBS + BlackMagic ATEM Mini

PostPosted: Tue Jul 28, 2020 8:34 pm
by Jack Fairley
Sonnet sells Thunderbolt 3 external PCIe chassis that work with DeckLink cards.

Re: OBS + BlackMagic ATEM Mini

PostPosted: Wed Jul 29, 2020 12:51 am
by Rod Duarte
Jack Fairley wrote:Sonnet sells Thunderbolt 3 external PCIe chassis that work with DeckLink cards.


Ooooo!!

This might be the thing to do it.
I just emailed Sonnet with questions about it.
Will update here.

Re: OBS + BlackMagic ATEM Mini

PostPosted: Wed Jul 29, 2020 3:49 pm
by Rod Duarte
One issue I already see, is that:

All 4 enclosures they offer, that take 3 cards, have, as per their website:

One x8 mechanical (x4 electrical) PCIe 3.0
One x16 mechanical (x8 electrical) PCIe 3.0
One x8 mechanical (x4 electrical) PCIe 3.0

The quad HDMI DeckLink cards are x8.
x4 isn't enough bandwidth, is it?
As in, one slot in there has x8 so one card, fine.
But the other two would have half the bandwidth...
Or am I getting this wrong?

Re: OBS + BlackMagic ATEM Mini

PostPosted: Wed Jul 29, 2020 3:59 pm
by Rod Duarte
And I have another problem:

Thunderbolt is hard to find on PCs, so I looked at Magewell's USB solution.
One USB capture card, that only takes ONE HDMI input, costs the same as one quad DeckLink card.
So in effect, that route is 4x more expensive, and I need a USB hub too.

Hmmm.

Re: OBS + BlackMagic ATEM Mini

PostPosted: Wed Jul 29, 2020 5:13 pm
by Rod Duarte
SONNET replied:
Thank you for the information.

1) the differences in these chassis is mainly size, and mount ability.
The Echo Express SE IIIe is smaller, and can fit half-length PCIe cards. See Tech Specs here.
The Echo Express III-D is tall and thin, and can fit full-length PCIe cards. See Tech Specs here.
The Echo Express III-R is flatter and wide, and is designed to be fit in a rack mount. See Tech Specs here.

2) Yes the BMD Quad HDMI recorder will fit and work in these chassis. See our Compatibility chart here.

3) Yes, a 1080p video stream at 30fps uses ~2.2Gbps. You can use 12 of these streams simultaneously within a 40Gbps bandwidth.
See this video data rate calculator here.

4) These can be purchased on our web store here.

Let us know if this helps.

Regards,
Andy


So, cool. That answers part of the questions.
Now I just need to know about the PCI x4/x8 thing.
I'll follow up that reply with that question and see what they say.

Re: OBS + BlackMagic ATEM Mini

PostPosted: Wed Jul 29, 2020 5:59 pm
by David_Anderson
What software are you planning to use as an encoder? Will it support 4 simultaneous cameras in one frame?

Best,

David

Rod Duarte wrote:SONNET replied:
Thank you for the information.

1) the differences in these chassis is mainly size, and mount ability.
The Echo Express SE IIIe is smaller, and can fit half-length PCIe cards. See Tech Specs here.
The Echo Express III-D is tall and thin, and can fit full-length PCIe cards. See Tech Specs here.
The Echo Express III-R is flatter and wide, and is designed to be fit in a rack mount. See Tech Specs here.

2) Yes the BMD Quad HDMI recorder will fit and work in these chassis. See our Compatibility chart here.

3) Yes, a 1080p video stream at 30fps uses ~2.2Gbps. You can use 12 of these streams simultaneously within a 40Gbps bandwidth.
See this video data rate calculator here.

4) These can be purchased on our web store here.

Let us know if this helps.

Regards,
Andy


So, cool. That answers part of the questions.
Now I just need to know about the PCI x4/x8 thing.
I'll follow up that reply with that question and see what they say.

Re: OBS + BlackMagic ATEM Mini

PostPosted: Wed Jul 29, 2020 11:17 pm
by Roman Pytkin Pekarek
Im buing INTEL NUC for thunderbolt 3 connection ..

Re: OBS + BlackMagic ATEM Mini

PostPosted: Thu Jul 30, 2020 4:09 pm
by Rod Duarte
David_Anderson wrote:What software are you planning to use as an encoder? Will it support 4 simultaneous cameras in one frame?

Best,

David


OBS.
Yes, it does.

Re: OBS + BlackMagic ATEM Mini

PostPosted: Thu Jul 30, 2020 4:10 pm
by Rod Duarte
Roman Pytkin Pekarek wrote:Im buing INTEL NUC for thunderbolt 3 connection ..


I can't do this because a NUC definitely can't handle the stream encoding...
Or can it?

Re: OBS + BlackMagic ATEM Mini

PostPosted: Thu Jul 30, 2020 8:01 pm
by Rod Duarte
Right. So I think I'm back to square one here:

- Laptop means I need some sort of USB, right.
- The suggested Sonnet tech solution, is an enclosure that has x4/x4/x8 slots. Not enough, I need x8/x8/x8 for the DeckLink cards.
- The other problem is, the enclosure needs TB3 for the bandwidth and speed. I want an AMD laptop and I can't find TB3 on any of those.

At this point I'm thinking of going back to the PC building alternative. But I need it to be SMALL so that means another problem. Smaller motherboards don't have all the PCI slots I need. miniITX has one slot. MiniDTX has two. So MicroATX could be a thing.
The only MicroATX board for X570, with three available PCI slots, is the one that's currently in my PC:
Image
But, as you can see, it's two x16 and one x4, so it still won't cut it.
And of course I'm assuming there won't be a GPU in one of the x16 slots, because for this use, I don't need a discreet GPU (although, for streaming, the NVENC encoder on Nvidia cards would be great).
This all means I'd have to go ATX but that means a big PC. ARGH.
HELP.

Re: OBS + BlackMagic ATEM Mini

PostPosted: Thu Jul 30, 2020 8:22 pm
by Jack Fairley
You need an ATX PC running a chipset with enough lanes to run three x8 cards, or you need to do some of this upstream (bigger switcher), or you need to use external capture devices.

Re: OBS + BlackMagic ATEM Mini

PostPosted: Thu Jul 30, 2020 10:36 pm
by Roman Pytkin Pekarek
Rod Duarte wrote:
Roman Pytkin Pekarek wrote:Im buing INTEL NUC for thunderbolt 3 connection ..


I can't do this because a NUC definitely can't handle the stream encoding...
Or can it?

Im using it definitely for stream encoding .. U can use X264 .. Or QuickSync .. I was long time used X264 (because is the best) .. But in last month i was switched to QUICKSYNC and quality is good .. There is cpu utilisation near ZERO .. So i can use Caspar CG for graphics playout on the SAME intel NUC with BMD Ultrastudio MINI HD .. This really create my streaming setup smaller and smaller .. I not need BIG PC with DECKLINK card .. I love it ..

Re: OBS + BlackMagic ATEM Mini

PostPosted: Fri Jul 31, 2020 12:08 am
by Rod Duarte
Hmmm.

ATX PC or NUC both require a monitor, keyboard and mouse/trackpad.

That's another thing that was pointing me towards a laptop.
I think I'll end up just getting a strong laptop and then I'll get one elGato camlink per camera and a USB hub... It's starting to look like it's the easiest way. And maybe even the cheapest...

Definitely the most portable (I might wanna take the whole shebang to gigs eventually)

The problem with this, is, if I use a hub, it'll be a stupid bottleneck because all the capture cards are going through one port. Dammit.

Re: OBS + BlackMagic ATEM Mini

PostPosted: Fri Jul 31, 2020 2:35 am
by Rod Duarte
Right, so.

Going back to the Desktop idea, here's a build:
https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/YJxmwh

Cheaper than a comparable laptop, which is amazing considering that list includes keyboard/mouse and a monitor.
I could've picked cheaper parts in a couple places, but this build will allow for upgrading quite easily.
Half the RAM slots are empty, the power supply can take a LOT more stuff, I'll have one more PCI slot for a second DeckLink card upping my camera intake from 4 to 8, and I can even install a 10gbps network card in one of the 2 x4 slots.

Not bad.
The case I picked even has handles for ease of transportation.

Anyone spot anything I missed? Potential problems?

Re: OBS + BlackMagic ATEM Mini

PostPosted: Fri Jul 31, 2020 6:34 pm
by Rod Duarte
elGato replied:

Charles R. (Elgato)

Jul 31, 2020, 11:29 AM PDT
Hello Rodrigo,

Thank you for contacting Elgato technical support.

It is recommended that only one Elgato Gaming Cam Link 4k be run on a USB Root hub at a single time. Since this is a laptop it will likely only have a single USB root hub. You may be able to use multiple cameras within multiple scenes as long as the video source is disabled when the scene is not active.

But due to this limitation it is possible this may not work as intended or you may experience one or more of the Elgato Gaming Cam Link 4k's freezing or not displaying an image.

I hope this helps to clear things up. If there is anything else I can do to be of assistance, please feel free to let me know.

Best,

Charles R.
Elgato Technical Support

So... yeah. Gonna need to be a PC.

Re: OBS + BlackMagic ATEM Mini

PostPosted: Wed Aug 05, 2020 3:05 pm
by Rod Duarte
Any input on that build, guys?
Anywhere I could save, or maybe better parts to pick?

Re: OBS + BlackMagic ATEM Mini

PostPosted: Wed Aug 05, 2020 5:14 pm
by Jack Fairley
You could save by using the stock cooler that comes with the 3700X, a lower capacity power supply, and a GTX 1660, if you're just using it for OBS + NVENC.

Re: OBS + BlackMagic ATEM Mini

PostPosted: Sat Aug 08, 2020 2:10 am
by Rod Duarte
Thank you!
Sounds like a plan.